Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘Why not?’

‘Because only the killer of the first four victims would be able to replicate the things that do match in the fifth.’ He opened out both palms and cocked his head, as if challenging her to contradict him. And he waited.

She looked at him speculatively for a moment, then said, ‘You’re overlooking something.’

‘What?’

‘The killer is not the only person who knows his MO.’

He stared at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Well, who else?’

‘Every police officer on the investigation.’

He was about to dismiss the notion out of hand. But something stopped him. A memory that wormed its way to the head of the queue of thoughts fighting for space in his mind. A conversation he’d had with Bill Hart after the MERMER demonstration at the Academy. Of course, it has to be used very carefully , Hart had said. I mean, think about it. You’re the investigating officer. You make a detailed examination of the crime scene, so now you carry the same information in your brain as the killer. Can we always be sure we’ll know which is which, who is who? But he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that someone on my team murdered Lynn Pan?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘Someone who used the other murders as a convenient cover. Someone who knew enough detail to make it convincing and throw your investigation into confusion. Who else but a cop would have access to that information?’

Thoughts tumbled through Li’s brain like balls in a lottery drum. He didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t find a convincing counter argument. If the DNA didn’t match, it was the only possible answer. Which meant they were now looking for two killers. And one of them was someone he knew.

In his search for some alternative, his eyes fell upon a pile of envelopes and a small parcel wrapped in brown paper sitting on the table. At first he wasn’t even looking at them, they were just a convenient focus for the eye. He was running through all the people on his team, the officers from forensics, the pathology lab, everyone who would have access to the kind of information which would allow them to stage Lynn Pan’s killing in such a way that Li would think it was another Ripper murder. And then another ugly little thought sneaked up out of left field and he found himself staring at the parcel on the table and listening to the blood pulsing in his head. ‘What the hell’s that?’ he said.

Margaret looked towards the table. ‘Just the mail. I picked it up when I came back from the autopsy.’ And then she realised what was in his head. ‘Oh, God …’ It was barely a whisper.

The parcel was about twelve centimetres square, wrapped in brown paper and sealed with sticky tape. Li’s name and address was written on it, in what seemed to Li like a familiar hand. But there were no stamps. No postmark. It had been hand-delivered. ‘Do we have any gloves in the house?’ he said, not taking his eyes off it.

Margaret nodded and ran off to the kitchen. She returned a few moments later with a pair of clear plastic disposable food-handling gloves. She kept a box of them in the cupboard above the food preparation area. Li took them and pulled them on, and very carefully began picking at the sticky tape until he had raised a corner of it. Then he eased it free of the paper, a centimetre at a time until he was able to open one end of the parcel. He slid out a plain, white cardboard box tied with a red ribbon. He undid the ribbon and lifted the lid. Inside, nestled in cotton wool stained with blood that had dried and turned brown, were Lynn Pan’s ears. Margaret’s gasp was quite involuntary. Li felt nausea turning to anger. Tucked down the side of the box was a folded note. He gently eased it out and open it up. Red ink. And what appeared to be the same, spidery handwriting as before.

Dear Chief ,

A couple of ears for you. As promised.

Sincerely,

Jack.

A red flag flapped in the wind outside the white-tiled police station on the corner of Fanggu Lu and Fangxing Lu. As the sun went down, the wind was doing its best to detach stubborn leaves from the scholar trees that lined the street. A couple of bicycle repair men on the corner wore gloves to protect oily fingers from the cold as they worked on the skeleton of an upturned cycle, the last job of the day. Li drove past the sports centre on his left, basketball courts and soccer pitches, a domed stadium with indoor tennis courts. Beyond it, traffic buzzed like flies dying in the autumn cold around the multi-storey Feng Chung shopping centre. At the end of the street he parked and crossed to the apartment block on the corner. A jian bing lady was selling pancakes from a stand in the gardens, while a warden swaddled in blue coat and red armband wore a white face mask as she patrolled the perimeter, casting a long shadow across the grass.

At the entrance to Lao Dai’s apartment, a couple of tricycle goods carriers were parked under a tin roof, and another Chinese flag snapped and cracked like a whip in the breeze. Li climbed the couple of steps to the door and went in. A short flight of stairs led to a lobby and the elevator. A stairgate stood ajar at the entrance to the stairwell. Off to the left, a corridor led to a door with a plaque which read, Veteran Senior Officers Activity Centre . For some reason it was also labelled in English, Old Cadres . Li knocked and walked in. An old man with a very large pair of glasses sat reading the Beijing Youth Daily next to a dispenser of bottled water. He looked up at Li, his face expressionless, then he looked at the front page of his paper and then back at Li.

‘ Ni hau ,’ Li said, and the old man nodded silent acknowledgement.

A big screen television stood on a wooden cabinet next to a tall refrigerator which had seen better days. In an alcove at the far end of the room the last sunshine of the day slanted in through windows on two sides. Two old men sat playing chess among the pot plants. From a room in a corridor leading off, Li heard the sound of men’s voices raised in an argument.

The apartment was provided by the Ministry of Public Security for retired senior police officers. Li wondered if he, too, would end up in a place like this one day. He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the chess players. For some reason, Old Dai never went to the park on a Tuesday.

‘You just cannot keep your face off the front pages of the newspapers these days, can you?’ Dai said, without looking up.

‘So it seems,’ Li replied. He paused. ‘Dai, I need your advice.’

Dai’s chess partner immediately rose to his feet. He had a long, lugubrious face, and a cardigan that hung open to reveal an egg-stained shirt. ‘No cheating,’ he said, and he headed out into the stairwell.

Old Dai grinned. ‘As if I needed to.’ And then his smile faded. ‘You are in trouble?’

Li sighed. ‘Maybe.’

Dai returned to his examination of the chessboard. ‘You had better tell me.’

‘I think the woman killed last night might have been murdered by a police officer.’

Dai lifted his eyes from the chessboard, all thoughts of the game banished from his mind. ‘Why do you think this?’

Li told him, and Dai sat listening in silence and gazing pensively from the window. When he had finished, Li added, ‘Margaret has taken the ears to the pathology department to confirm that they are Lynn Pan’s. Not that I think there is any doubt. A visual match will do for now. A DNA match will seal it for the record.’

‘And the handwriting?’

‘I have requested a calligrapher to compare the characters on the note that came with the ears, to the characters on the one that came with the kidney. Forensics are comparing the inks.’